Mickadeit: Park vote anything but guarantee

Sept. 11, 2013

Updated 7:32 p.m.

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Irvine City Council members from left, Beth Krom, Jeffrey Lalloway, Mayor Steven Choi, Christina Shea, and Larry Agran, voted 5-0 to move the $176 million improvement plan forward, but the vote could be illusory. ANGELA PIAZZA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Irvine council-watchers overflow into the City Hall lobby during Tuesday's packed meeting. Many watched the meeting from a TV. ANGELA PIAZZA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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President and CEO of FivePoint Communities Emile Haddad shakes hands with Irvine Mayor Steven Choi at Tuesday's Irvine City Council meeting. ANGELA PIAZZA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Irvine City Council members from left, Beth Krom, Jeffrey Lalloway, Mayor Steven Choi, Christina Shea, and Larry Agran, voted 5-0 to move the $176 million improvement plan forward, but the vote could be illusory. ANGELA PIAZZA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Before everybody gets too giddy about the Irvine City Council vote to move forward with the proposed addition to the Great Park of 668 acres and $176 million in improvements, let me clarify what the council legally committed to: Nothing.

Yes, it was a 5-0 vote, but it was only a vote to negotiate for a final deal, and the reality is that the plan as presented has only two votes – Mayor Steven Choi and Councilwoman Christina Shea. The other three council members went along because they could smell the tar the soccer moms were heating up in the parking lot on Tuesday evening.

The matter came before the council at this juncture only because Shea, and Shea alone, specifically asked for it. Choi had agendized it early last week but pulled it off the agenda on Friday at the request of Councilman Jeff Lalloway, who wanted more time to negotiate. When Shea heard Choi had done that, she quickly contacted City Manager Sean Joyce and had it put on the agenda under her name.

This was a plan that had to be brought kicking and screaming into the light of a public forum.

And even after the formal presentation of the plan by developer FivePoint Communities, Lalloway and council members Beth Krom and Larry Agran were skeptical or lukewarm.

“Certainly a very compelling proposition,” but… (Krom). “Very intriguing,” but … (Argran). Lalloway backed off a complicated financing mechanism he had earlier criticized, but stuck with a second reason he has cited as cause for concern: whether there should be a municipal golf course that would compete with privately owned courses in the city.

But the council could hardly ignore the crowd. At least 600 people were in and around council chambers. You had building-industry types, enviros, golfers, even an advocate for the cricket community (the sport, not the insects). Most of all, you had the aforementioned soccer moms (and dads) who hauled squadrons of fidgety, 4-foot-tall futballers into chambers, in uniform, for a show of force.

Watching the sheer misery on their young faces as they endured four hours of adultspeak – a goodly portion of it the particularly agonizing form known as Agranspeak – reminded me of being dragged to the full performance of Handel’s Messiah when I was about 8. I had no idea what was going on, I was bored silly, but I sensed it was important.

At any rate, the kids were rewarded when the council moved forward with a package of Great Park sports amenities that will, among other things, add 20 soccer fields. Or was the 5-0 more illusory than substantive?

Krom wants to make sure the active park facilities don’t overwhelm passive park features that make great urban parks truly great. I get that. By my calculation, there would still be 450 acres left for squirrel-watching and the like, but she’s going to have to be appeased. Lalloway sounds adamant about the golf course. It’s a key component from FivePoint’s view because it provides the revenue that makes it possible to keep the rest of the park maintained. So that’s got to get sorted out.

Then there’s Agran. He’s created an issue – the site of a new high school – that has very little to do with the park or his jurisdiction. He has decided the site picked by the school board near the Great Park wouldn’t be safe or practical, so it should be moved to the other side of the park. Irvine superintendent Terry Walker got up and said the current planned site serves the district’s needs and that Agran’s site might actually make the school less safe.

In other words: Mr. Agran, thank you very much, but we’ve done our homework.

Yet the rest of the council allowed Agran to tie the school site to the park plan, which adds another layer of complexity and uncertainty to the FivePoint proposal. Negotiations will ensue, with Agran again working on the city staff, just like the bad old days.

What the Irvine sports crowd is considering is this: Should it trust the council to cut a deal in a reasonable amount of time, say by year’s end? Or should it buy itself some insurance and start collecting signatures for a June ballot initiative that would require the council to take the deal? Ballot-box zoning is generally poor public policy, but it is undoubtedly an effective political tool in an election year.

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